Michael Grunwald, the Time Magazine reporter who advocated killing Julian Assange with a drone strike, is a quintessential mainstream media hack – he describes himself as a “statist” and thinks big government actually exists to protect people’s rights.

On Saturday, Grunwald tweeted that he “can’t wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange”. Grunwald was forced to apologize but not before he complained about how his outburst, “gives Assange supporters a nice safe persecution complex to hide in”.

A picture soon emerged of Grunwald as an ardent supporter the state and a pathetic apologist for every control freak aspect of modern society you can imagine.

Back in April, Grunwald wrote a piece for Time advocating ubiquitous surveillance cameras, gun control, drone warfare, NSA spying, government regulation of business, and basically any and all “Big Brother intrusions into our private lives,” openly inviting the state to “tread on me” in order for “big government” to help “protect other important rights”.

However, Grunwald’s definition of what constitutes “rights” are nowhere to be found in the actual Bill of Rights.

“Like the right of a child to watch a marathon or attend first grade without getting killed — or, for that matter, the right to live near a fertilizer factory without it blowing up your house.”

Grunwald’s argument that every fundamental liberty can be shredded in order for the government to “protect” the right not to be killed – which is not a right at all – is based on emotional bluster and has no basis in reality whatsoever.

In addition, his “right” to not be killed apparently doesn’t extend to people that embarrass the same big government that Grunwald so vigorously defends. The US government can extra-judicially assassinate anyone it likes without Grunwald getting too upset about it.

“I guess you could call me a statist,” writes Grunwald, before adding “….we do need Big Government to attack the big collective-action problems of the modern world. Our rights are not inviolate.”

Apparently, Grunwald is under the delusion that big government regulation can eliminate accidents, murderers and terrorists.

Grunwald’s control freak argument is also constructed on the baseless assumption that terrorism actually poses a major threat to our lives, when in reality academic studies show that Americans are more likely to be killed by accident-causing deer, severe allergic reactions to peanuts, or bee stings than they are by terrorists.

Grunwald’s simpering, obsequious fealty in deference to the state and his open hostility towards cherished and hard won American freedoms is obviously central to why he was hired as a senior reporter for Time Magazine, and another perfect example of why the establishment media is rapidly losing its audience.